Strategies for a Healthy Home Office or School Space

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Strategies for a Healthy Home Office or School Space

With COVID-19 still having an impact across the US and Canada, it is likely that working and schooling at home will continue for many people. As a result, you may be considering an upgrade to your current home office or school set-up to improve your productivity -- like a new ergonomic office chair, more storage, or noise cancelling headphones!

But did you know that one of the most important contributors to productivity is actually your indoor air quality? New studies from Harvard’s public health department, SUNY Upstate Medical University and Syracuse University have found that improved indoor environmental quality doubled occupants’ cognitive function test scores. Focusing on the air that you and your children breathe can help transform your home into a great productivity tool!

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Painting and Staining ThermaCork

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Painting and Staining ThermaCork

Do you have a project that you think would be perfect for ThermaCork, but the only thing holding you back is the color of finished product? If you have ever wondered about the viability of painting, staining, or sealing our ThermaCork Façade panels, hopefully the results of this backyard test can answer your questions.

The Issue

While ThermaCork makes a wonderful insulator and is a great option for a natural exterior façade, the plain color of it is not always for everyone. When left in its natural state, ThermaCork ranges from a dark brown to a light tan. This color variance comes from natural variance between cork harvests, and from environmental changes in the final installed location such as humidity, temperature, and exposure to sunlight.

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Savor this Summer with Small Planet’s Social Hour Suggestions

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Savor this Summer with Small Planet’s Social Hour Suggestions

The Year 2020 will probably be known for the explosion of the Zoom social hour. Whether you’re joining them for work functions, to keep in touch with family and friends, or to take advantage of an unprecedented opportunity to see the inside of other people’s homes, Zoom calls are definitely going to be a part of this summer’s activities.

The staff at Small Planet wanted to share some ways to increase your enjoyment of your Zoom social hours or (gasp) even in-person gatherings with some drink recipes, activities for the kids and some pictures.

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ThermaCork Hives Become Bees' New Sweet Spot

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ThermaCork Hives Become Bees' New Sweet Spot

I’ve been a hobby beekeeper for several years, and I’m always looking for ways to help my bees survive the myriad of challenges they face. To that end, I’ve tried to design hives that mimic the honey bee’s natural log homes as much as possible. Back in January, I wrote a guest post for Small Planet Supply about our experiments keeping honey bees in cork insulated beehives.

stumbled on Thermacork while searching for a natural alternative to foam insulation for my beehives. I had been building hives out of two inch thick lumber, but it was heavy and didn’t really offer that much more insulation despite its additional weight and expense. After using Thermacork on my hive’s roof, I thought, “Why not coat the whole hive with this wonderful stuff?” So I did, and Cork Hives was born.

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Zehnder ComfoAir 70 Lets You Breathe Easier in a Smaller Space

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Zehnder ComfoAir 70 Lets You Breathe Easier in a Smaller Space

Do you hear that? Come a little closer and quiet down. Now do you hear it? That’s the sound of a Zehnder ComfoAir 70 (CA 70) providing fresh air to your studio apartment, your home office, or small workout space. Perhaps you’re more familiar with the (almost no) sound of a Zehnder system in a larger home, regardless the end goal is the same; To remove stale used up air from your living space and replace it with fresh filtered air while recovering the heat from exhausted air. Wondering how you can achieve this feat in your own small space without convoluted ducting and having to tear out drywall? Perhaps your building a new tiny home and need a way to ventilate while conserving heat? Read on to find out what benefits the ComfoAir 70 can breathe into your space.

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Using SANCO2 in Multi-Family Buildings to Get off Gas

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Using SANCO2 in Multi-Family Buildings to Get off Gas

Multifamily domestic hot water design need not be a complicated or expensive array of water heaters for each residence. A tidy and efficient design can be provided by a centralized heat pump system. To best achieve this, enter the SANCO2 hot water heat pump. These two-component systems can be used as building blocks of a much larger central DHW plant. The SANCO2 also boasts increased efficiency over electric heating element tanks, and lower global warming potential than natural gas and even other heat pump water heaters. Using a centralized DHW plant design, rather than individual units for each residence, the cost is spread out while still providing steady hot water to residents. Consider meeting new energy codes with a centralized hot water heat pump system that provides higher energy efficiency and a carbon free heating system.

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KlimaGuard: Performance & Affordability Now Comes in More Sizes

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KlimaGuard: Performance & Affordability Now Comes in More Sizes

As part of our ongoing drive towards higher-efficiency homes, Small Planet Supply is committed to bringing high-performance building materials to all parts of the market. In 2019, we introduced our KlimaGuard line of building tape as a budget friendly option for high-performance envelope air sealing. Ever since its release, KlimaGuard has been a hit with our customers, and we are excited to announce some improvements and new sizes to further support your building and air sealing needs!

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HRV Efficiency: No Matter the Measurement, Zehnder Tops the Scores

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HRV Efficiency: No Matter the Measurement, Zehnder Tops the Scores

Once you’ve made the decision to use an HRV, what is the next step? Finding the right system system. Many new and familiar brands offer a plethora of options for recovery ventilators. What sets one choice apart from the others? Performance!

Various measurement criteria come together to point towards a clear winner, and that winner is Zehnder. Here are the measurements and what they mean when selecting a HRV system.

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HRVs and How They Help Achieve California's Title 24 Code Compliance

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HRVs and How They Help Achieve California's Title 24 Code Compliance

When building a new home in California this year, builders may come up against some new items in the building code that may be unfamiliar. Notably, the requirements for mechanical ventilation using heat recovery ventilators or HRVs. These systems go hand in hand with the improved airtightness measures that are being called for and will also affect the building’s energy design rating significantly.

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Better Building Coach Explores Four New Products and Projects on Road Trip to California

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Better Building Coach Explores Four New Products and Projects on Road Trip to California

Sometimes when you work in one place for a long time and get in a routine (write, edit, repeat), you forget what an amazing world we live in and that there are people doing incredible things to make the world better everywhere. Small Planet Supply’s Better Building Coach made its first stops in California last week. While the purpose of the trip was to get the Better Building Coach to California and to provide information about our products and services to people along the way, it was Albert Rooks and I got an education too. We met people who are making new products, are building in innovative ways and we had a lot of fun on the drive from Vancouver, BC to Monterey, California. Here are some of the really cool building products, projects and people we met along the way.

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Air is the New Water

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Air is the New Water

Remember the good old days when you could drink water from a stream? You don’t? Neither do I! Anyone who has any familiarity with drinking water contamination knows that just because the water in a stream may look crystal clear, there can be all sorts of bacteria, viruses and other contaminants that can cause illness. So why is it taking so long to recognize that we need to be concerned about the air we breathe and have a plan for ensuring our buildings provide clean, fresh air?

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Designing Healthy Building Assemblies Using ThermaCork - Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Cork

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Designing Healthy Building Assemblies Using ThermaCork - Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Cork

In this blog post, Small Planet Supply’s Josh Palmer explains how builders and homeowners can confidently use cork in their building assemblies.

If you’re someone whose fallen in love with natural properties of ThermaCork but are unsure whether you can use it to insulate your home, then this blog post is for you!   As we’ve outlined in previous blog posts, cork has been used for hundreds of years as an insulation material and ThermaCork is composed of 100% cork, is carbon-negative and has no chemicals added in production.  Builders and homeowners who are considering cork may worry whether using cork as insulation puts them at risk for developing mold.  The simple answer is no, if the wall assembly is done correctly.  More details about mold, mold prevention and correct wall assembly are outlined in this blog post. 

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Beekeeper Uses ThermaCork in Innovative Cork Hive Design

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Beekeeper Uses ThermaCork in Innovative Cork Hive Design

Liz Miller is our guest blogger this month. She is using ThermaCork to build beehives in Washington state. In this interesting blogpost she details the inspiration for and creation of Cork Hives as well as the origin of her love of bees.

It’s all over the news: Pollinators, including the honey bee, are in trouble. Commercial beekeepers, despite feeding and medicating their bees, lost 40% of their hives last year. Hobby beekeepers often fare worse, losing all of the hives in their small apiaries each winter.

I've always loved insects, but I think my fascination with bees started when I was a little girl living in San Jose, California, and our neighbors kept honey bees.

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Small Planet Supply’s Better Building Coach is a Mobile Showroom that Brings the Future of Building to You

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Small Planet Supply’s Better Building Coach is a Mobile Showroom that Brings the Future of Building to You

When the idea first came up for retrofitting a bus into a mobile workshop and showroom, there were a few of us at Small Planet who were a bit skeptical. Since then, even the most reluctant of the staff admit to being intrigued by the transformation that is taking place at our Tumwater warehouse.

In October, Albert Rooks, CEO of Small Planet Supply, took possession of a four-year-old Starcraft 25-foot shuttle bus and began planning the transformation. Now, halfway through the change, we asked him why this was so important to him, especially since running the Better Building Coach entails using fuel.

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Flat Walls are So Last Year - Start 2020 with Some Textured Flare

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Flat Walls are So Last Year - Start 2020 with Some Textured Flare

Sometimes at Small Planet we get so focused on the energy-saving aspects of our products that we forget to showcase what you can do with our materials inside your home. Case in point, ThermaCork decorative cork panels. What’s so appealing about these panels is that you don’t need to be in the process of building a house to use this product, you can use it now.

Decorative cork panels are great to have inside your home, as they are non-toxic and sound absorbing as well as beautiful.

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Insulation Project Wins Science Fair & Shows ThermaCork is a Winner Too

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Insulation Project Wins Science Fair & Shows ThermaCork is a Winner Too

ThermaCork is a 100% natural product that appeals to customers who value its insulation and accoustic properies. While we’re accustomed to hearing good things from our customers, we were delighted to receive an email from one of our youngest customers, Jenna, who used ThermaCork in her eighth grade science fair project. When Jenna sent an email to us (in the side bar to the right), we just had to learn more.

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The Intersection of Healthy and High Efficiency Building

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The Intersection of Healthy and High Efficiency Building

Recently Albert Rooks and I went to California to participate in a presentation to a builder about Hayward Home Score and energy-efficient building with Hayward Score Founder Bill Hayward and Healthy Building Scientist Joe Medosch.  Hayward Home Score helps homeowners identify major issues in their homes that can impact their health and gives them personalized actionable recommendations to remedy them.  Their further work, The Five Principles of a Healthy Home, provide specific guidelines on how to have the healthiest home possible. 

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Just for Fun: Small Planet's "Fun Fact" Super Hero

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Just for Fun: Small Planet's "Fun Fact" Super Hero

In most workplaces, looking at meeting notes hardly qualifies as a pleasurable activity. Well, at Small Planet Supply we can hardly wait to open our weekly summaries because our Sales Associate Taylor Groebner livens it up with some strange and (sometimes weird) fun facts. If you’re one of our USA customers you’ve probably already been treated do Taylor’s cheerful efficient demeanor. But if you haven’t, these Fun Fact excerpts from her meeting notes will make your day. It certainly makes ours.

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When ‘No Sound’ Sounds Good: Using Thermacork and Other Materials To Manage Noise

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When ‘No Sound’ Sounds Good: Using Thermacork and Other Materials To Manage Noise

At Small Planet Supply we get a lot of inquiries about using ThermaCork for soundproofing applications.  With noise pollution increasing, even while other forms of pollution are remaining steady or decreasing, finding ways to turn down the volume is important.  

If you’re already trying to cut down on harmful VOCs, solvents and environmentally destructive production processes in your home or project, the next logical step is to design for noise reduction. 

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Tales from Two Cities: Portland Green Building Slam and the NW Green Building Slam Summit in Seattle

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Tales from Two Cities: Portland Green Building Slam and the NW Green Building Slam Summit in Seattle

PDX 2019 Green Building Slam

This years’ Green Building Slams and Summit put on by the NW Ecobuilding Guild was by all accounts a fantastic success. Attendance was high and the presentations covered topics from the odd to the inspirational. Among my favorites were Scott Kosmecki of Hinge-Build’s delightful deconstruction of an aging Portland bungalow and the notion that older houses have ’good bones.’ Another we loved was Caitlin Pope Daum and Kyla Tanaka of Studio Wild Landscape Architecture’s illumination of multi-layered ‘high-performance’ landscaping that benefits not only human inhabitants but local ecosystems and looks great to boot.

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